I love my Venus razor, the one time I left it at home and had to borrow irishfella’s Mach3 was not a fun experience. I like my moisturising strips and that handle. It’s damn near impossible to cut yourself with it. Even if it does look like a sex toy.
As far as antiperspirants go…yes unscented is a good thing, for deoderants, unscented sort of defeats the purpose.
Different strokes, I guess; I love the Mach 3.
And I tend to call all anti-perspirants/deodorants “deodorants”. Everyone I know does, too. Incorrect, but not something I’m gonna worry about much.
applause
In addition to all that, I hate how marketing makes the assumption that there is only one kind of role model that men apparantly take fashion and grooming advice from…freshly showered retired athletes. This apparantly leads naturally to the “Sport this, Sport that, X-treme Sport whatever” product lines.
Really, 99% of us don’t care what Evander Holyfield and Joe Montana groom with, and those of us that think for more than two seconds realize that these guys are the last ones that we should ever look to for advice on grooming. Really, these guys probably spend all of 3 seconds in post-shower purity before hitting the bucket of bufallo wings and rebuilding their small-block chevy.
I want a hygeine product pitched to me by Jon Stewart, Stevie Wonder, Jet Li, Christopher Walken, Alex Trebek…these are true men’s men who I know, deep in my heart, treat how they smell with ultimate seriousness.
[slight hijack] The men’s blades work just fine with the women’s razor - I’ve tried. I really couldn’t care less about moisturizing strips. And Target also sells a store brand which is usually about 40% cheaper and also works just fine.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t care if my razor blades are color-coordinated with the razor; I would happily have bought the men’s razor, but they were including a free shaving gel with the women’s version, so I bought that. Years later, it still works fine - after all, there aren’t exactly a lot of complex moving parts to wear out.
Has anyone seen the Geiko commercial for the razor with fifteen blades? Fucking hillarious.
As a female, my mind is always boggled by the marketing for men’s hygiene products. Don’t get me wrong, the marketing towards women is equally as dumb, but the men’s just strike me as amazing.
For instance, they now make special shampoo and conditioner for men! Because, lord knows! Your hair is soooo different and you need special, manly, non flowery, double priced shampoo. Or men’s moisturizer. Why not use the women’s stuff that is half the price and has been around for years?
I think the adverts. play into that most men don’t want to use women’s stuff as it might seem less manly. Whatever. If someone is dumb enough to pay twice as much for a far worse product- go right ahead.
related note: I have not been able to find the same shampoo twice in a row for the last five years. Every single time Ineed some, they no longer have what I had last time. And I’m guessing that Shampoo science isn’t exactly a cutting edge field.
So I just buy what’s on sale. I figure it’s all the same, though I make sure I don’t get anything that says it “thickens” my hair. I’ve also turned bottle-washing into an art. It absolutely fascinating how many of those packages make claims that are physically impossible. I’ve been considering a lawsuit…
I am so with the OP regarding the marketing of all men’s products… except beer. I don’t want to buy some suds just because it says “BEER”. In that regard, do your wurst, appeal to my most basic instinct… sex.
It’s like with that St. Pauli Girl beer. I’ve bought it before and believe you me it twern’t because of the taste. It was because of her big knockers and pigtails. Big knockers and pigtails are just a freakin’ vunderbaugh combination. Heck, I’d probably buy the entire line of big knockers and pigtails shaving products if they existed.
When I moved out and started doing my own shopping, I decided that their should be a line of bathroom products (not grooming products, not personal care products) called For Guys. All boxes, labels etc would be olive drab. All text would be in military stencil font. There would be no cute or clever names. The shampoo line would be- Regular, Dandruff, For Oily Heads, For Dry Heads. The toothpaste line would ne-Regular, and Aah! Cold! (for guys with temperature sensitive teeth). Deodorant would be-No Smell, and Football Leather.
There would be no conditioner.
For Guys-New? Different? No freaking way. No pretty labels. No smelling like a garden. No changes that screw up a good thing.
Or
For Guys-Because the last time you showered at her place, the bottle you poured on your head turned out be jasmine scented bath oil.
Standing O for the OP.
Thank Bob I have no hair to wash; I never even look at the shampoo aisle.
$15 for clippers at Wal-Mart, and you’ll never have to look at shampoo and/or conditioner or that grecian formula stuff again.
Well I don’t want my hair to smell like fucking flowers, but I have long hair so I have to use some kind of halfway decent conditioner. So far Pantene has worked well, but they keep changing the damn packages and altering the formulas slightly.
:: runs down the hall to Marketing ::
Me too! It has a very faint scent but it’s completely unaffending (& I’m very picky about scents).
It’s a complete pain trying to find soap and shampoo, etc in a scent that doesn’t make me gag and make my guy smell all girly-- it’s not fair to him and I want my guy to just smell like a guy. Actually, I don’t want to smell girly either. I didn’t spend a bazillion bucks on my perfume so that it can be trumped by a penny’s worth of rotten fruit salad smelling soap fragrance you idjits think I’ll like because I posses ovaries. There’s a reason why Ivory soap has been around a million years; everybody in the family can use it. And have you noticed it’s never really been changed? Take notes manufacturers!
The best shampoo and conditioner I’ve ever had was from The Body Shop. It was banana, but didn’t smell like anything. They stopped making it last year and all their others doth suck. Needing a new shampoo I remembered one from when I was a kid that smelled really good, so I thought I might be able to find some of it still. Looked everywhere for that great smelling herbal shampoo… oh waitaminute; herbal. They’d taken a nice, clean, lightly herbal shampoo and made it into forty different stenches so some bimbo can orgasm over them at inappropriate times in their ads. Bastards.
I’m telling you, I go to great lengths to find the unscented version of everything possible. My towels do not need to smell like anything except cotton, and they certainly don’t need to reek for weeks after they’ve been washed. My dishes do not need to be lemonberry hooha fresh.
Also, I am no longer nine years old. I don’t need or want flowery pastel anything in my bathroom. I actually like pink, but it is possible that there are some women in this world who have not splashed pink all over their bathrooms as though a decorator bazooka barfed pepto bismol across every surface.
I think the lesson here, as has been so eloquently stated, go with what works, ferinstance;
I shave with a brush, shaving soap and a straight razor. I’ve had the same cake of sandalwood shaving soap for three and a half years, and I shave thrice during a week. Much of the shaving soap has been made the same way since the early 1900’s, and the makers arent about to change.
Deodorant, is deodorant, is deodorant. You want one that doesn’t ever, ever change? Find one that is a scent match to your cologne (if you wear it). The scents mingle, and the formulation doesn’t change.
If you don’t wear cologne, start. Find a good one, and stick with it. As a general rule, women love men that smell good. Don’t be afraid boys, it’s 2005.
I wear boxers when I can, and boxer briefs when I can’t (like when I’m at work or weaing a kilt). Boxers have been boxers since they were invented. Tighty whities are for 8-year olds. Again, if you don’t want anyone messin’ with your underoos, buy them where you buy suits (even if you don’t buy suits) clothiers, as opposed to chain retail stores cater to men who abhor changes in their gear, and will likely have the same underwear on the rack in 10 years that they do today.
Shampoo and soap: Guys, go to a beauty supply house. Buy your unscented shampoo a gallon at a time. Odds are, it won’t change a lick, because the customers (i.e salons) won’t buy the stuff if it does. I enjoy good soap that has a good scent, and is good for my skin. I found some on a vacation to St. Maarten a few years back (it was the hotel soap), and it’s all I use. It’s been the same soap since 1934, only today, there’s gel.
I’m with the OP in spirit, but there’s an easy way to solve his dilemmas. Trade up. It will cost you a little more, but the frustration will evaporate. The problem is, in this disposable world we live in, that consumers can never expect to find the same thing for a very long period of time, since to make the margins, companies that do business with mass retail chains try to make ‘improvements’ to their products, and because Joe Six Pack eats up that ‘new and improved’ drivel, OP’s like this one are born.
A bit of sage wisdom from a very old and dear friend of mine;
Buy the best you can afford, and when you can afford better, buy it, you’ll never go wrong.
It rocks! I love that the slogan is “So Effective, You Can Skip a Day.” I joke with my boyfriend that you can tell it’s a guy’s deodorant with a slogan like that. They wouldn’t do that for women’s stuff in fear that they’d get grossed out. 
Oh, and:
Not for me. I love smelling my guy when he’s freshly washed and has a clean, soapy smell. Mmmmm. Adding cologne to the mix would ruin it, this I know.
Could you clarify this, please?
I was going to go there, but just didn’t have the energy. Glad to see someone picked up my slack.
Do you know of a store that still sells straight razors? You can’t get the damn things around here anymore, in fact your lucky to get single blade disposables. Shaving every day sucks already and I have to use 2 razors each time. And another on the scalp once a week. Can’t go wrong with Old Spice.
Forget about deodorants, Arm&Hammer baking soda works just as well. Don’t try to sell me a gel, all that is for is to keep it from being seen, and around here if you can see a guy’s armpits, he generally hasn’t concerned himself with niceties like deodorant.
Come to think of it, outlaw biker might be the best look to go for, shaved head, long beard, very easy to take care of.
Remember, I’m a man. I’m big, hairy and don’t care what I smell like, as long as I don’t gag people.
Ew, that was vague. To clarify: I lacked the the energy to trot out my “let’s fight stereotypes” rhetoric; I wasn’t going to go all militant dyke on wolfman’s ass. I thought the OP was very funny.
C’mon Matt, you know what he meant. Plus he was in the middle of a great rant and may have forgotten that there are some here that occasionally take offense at just about anything depending on the mood. When I first read that line I thought “Oh shit. There goes a great rant because of one line.” I know you can let this one slide for what it was intended to mean.
That said, great rant wolf. It’s nice to be well groomed and not stink a room out. But damnit, we’ve been attractive enough to propogate the species long before Madison Avenue came up with the “Metrosexual” sales angle. Bottom line: We don’t make people gag from B.O., we’re doing pretty well.
BTW: has anyone noticed the new (I think) ad campaign from Mitchum? I can’t remember it exactly but I remember thinking “Allright, finally going back for the guy market”. I fully expect it to be pulled due to protests from various groups crying sexism. It was like an ad from 1972. I’m buying Mitchum from now until they cave to the pressure.